Oct 28 2005 08:23 AM
Some questions for Frank Thomas:
1) You were known as a dead pull hitter. Did they ever try an infield shift against you?
________________
2) You switched teams eight times between 1959 and 1966. What was going on there? What was it about your game that made GMs think if you as tradeable? Was it because they could try fit you in at so many different positions?
________________
3) You were famous for claiming that you could catch anybody's hardest throw barehanded.
3a) It is said that you always lived up to this claim. Is that true?
3b) At what distance did you catch them?
3c) Who was the hardest thrower you caught barehanded?
3d) Did this have anything to do with you breaking your thumb in 1964?
________________
4) Casey Stengel --- idiot, genius, or both? Now that you're in your seventies, do you understand him better?
________________
5) This is a sensitive one. Playing your whole career in the National League, your era was an era of aggressive integration, can you describe what the general atmosphere was like?
5a) Even for players without a racial animus, it must have been difficult as African-American players regularly won the Rookie of the Year and MVP awards through the fifties, and got the subsequent publicity. Is this accurate?
5b) Were there racial issues between yourself and Richie Allen? Or was it, as reported, merely horseplay that got out of hand? There are certainly accounts that say Allen divided the team on racial lines.
5c) Did you and Allen ever subsequently try to square things? And do you think this was a good look for him?
